Asia With more than 80,000 dead in Asia's tsunami disaster and the toll still rising, a core group of four countries took the lead in global relief efforts to stave off famine and disease. Asia Indonesia's nightmare continued with a death toll surpassing 45,000 along coastlines flattened by massive destruction as lawlessness broke out in panic-stricken areas. Asia The final death toll from Thailand's tidal wave disaster could approach 6,800, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra suggested, as European nations joined Thais in trying to trace thousands of missing people. Asia The US move to establish a "core group" of states to deal with the Asian tsunami crisis left open the question who would head relief efforts, a task traditionally handled by the United Nations. Iraq Pitched battles between US troops and Iraqi insurgents in strife-torn Mosul left 25 dead, and another 30 people were killed when a Baghdad house rigged with explosives blew up during a police raid. Saudi Saudi forces killed seven militants in a shootout in Riyadh after twin car bomb attacks against security targets in the latest strike by Islamist extremists waging a campaign of violence in the oil-rich kingdom. Mideast Three militants from the armed branch of the Palestinian group Hamas were killed by Israeli army fire during an incursion in the southern Gaza Strip, a Hamas spokesman said. Serbia-Kosovo Some 800 ethnic Albanians exhumed from a mass grave near Belgrade following the 1998-99 war in Kosovo were the victims of mass executions, Serbia's war crimes prosecutor said, in the first such admission from a Serb official. Ukraine Ukraine's opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko said that he planned to put forward his radical ally Yulia Timoshenko for the post of prime minister. Uganda The Ugandan government and northern rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) held the first ever face-to-face talks near the border with Sudan in a bid to resolve 18 years of conflict in the north. Japan Japan ended a year of disasters on a happy note with the royal family announcing that the emperor's only daughter Princess Sayako will marry, a piece of good news delayed twice by tragedy.